masozi has a PLAN
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On their first day of classes, Masozi is awake well before anyone else; he has a lot of practice informing his body of how long it's allowed to sleep, back in South Africa it was best to get in a good chunk of walking before the sun was high and the day got too hot. 

His dung beetles are ensconced in one of his former desk drawers, with mesh fabric from the artificing room covering the top, and thanks to the amaaaaaazing food here, this morning he was even able to squeeze out a bowel movement to feed them. They should do all right, now. 

....Lucy wanted mal grubs for her spiders. And Masozi has some unusual advantages on that front. He tucks the second spare desk drawer under his arm - after checking it for mals, obviously - and then steps out into the hall, burning some of his effortfully-accumulated non-maleficing mana to check his surroundings - 

 

- eeek there are suddenly SO MANY mals! There definitely weren't this many last night! 

 

...There was the curfew, apparently. Masozi hadn't even considered that this could apply in the MORNING as well! It's very inconvenient! And makes having woken up really early mostly pointless! 

He dives back into his room and locks the door, though - and then brandishes his drawer and bashes flat the mal that followed him in, that doesn't cost him mana.

Apparently boring exercise helps you accumulate mana? And he is in fact trying not to use any mana from his dung beetles, since APPARENTLY MAYBE it's bad for you? So he spends the next hour doing stretches and pushups and weird exercises using the drawer as a weight to lift. (Masozi has not exactly had any education in standard fitness activities.) 

By the time he hears the first doors opening, he has a decent pile of his own internally-generated mana, and is very ready to forge forth and start making the rounds of the freshman boys' bathrooms. He probably won't have time to hit all of them, if he wants to find Lucy before class to hand off his grubs. (He's already assuming that he'll skip breakfast. It's not like he's previously had more than one meal a day on average.) 

He parks himself in each bathroom long enough to reach out and use a teeensy drip of mana to coax all the mal grubs in the plumbing and other hiding-spots into coming out. At which point he loads them into the second former-desk-drawer, which he's using as a container. By the third bathroom, he has the entire bottom of the drawer covered in a layer of squirming grubs, and he's smiling to himself. 

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Miguel enters the bathroom - alone, he doesn't have bathroom buddies yet, but you're not supposed to need them on the first day if you're careful - observes this, and backs out as quickly as possible, because the sensible thing to do when someone's doing something sketchy and you aren't sure you can take them in a fight is to avoid them knowing you were there.

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All right, he's probably got time for one more bathroom and will still be able to run over to the cafeteria for breakfast - if he can't find Lucy and can't find anyone else willing to convey a drawer of grubs to Lucy, he supposes he can put them in his room and trap them in the drawer by blanket-wrapping them... 

Masozi jogs over to the next dorm hall, and settles himself in that bathroom. He's experimenting hard on mana-generation methods he can use even while sitting down and waiting for grubs to emerge. Systematically tensing all his muscles in a stationary exercise-routine doesn't work, but for some reason practicing imaginary English grammar exercises in his head does, at least a little....? 

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All right, that seems like all he's going to get for today, if he wants to make it to the cafeteria! 

Masozi trots over there with his drawerful of squirming-but-helpless mal grubs tucked under his arm, and looks around to see if Lucy is there. 

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Lucy and Wilbur are sitting together at a table as far from any vents or drains as they could manage, each one glancing around now and then for mals. 

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Masozi glances around as well - no mals nearby, for now at least - and then heads over to join them. 

"Morning! I have mal grubs for your spiders." He holds out his desk-drawer full of squirming grubs. 

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"Cool! What do you want for this many?"

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- oh wow he has no idea! 

"I want to get spider silk socks from you, I think? This probably isn't enough to trade for that, but maybe I can put it toward that? I'll get you more later - I didn't have time to do all the bathrooms because the curfew goes until morning." 

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"Sure. It'll take us a little while to make them, we won't expect payment in full until they're complete."

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"Right. How much of the total do you think this is?" Probably asking that straight-up is not the best haggling tactic, but he doesn't know a better one, and just asking straightforwardly seems like the cooperative thing to do here. 

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She examines the drawer. "The thing about grubs is that either they die and rot, or they live and they turn into bigger bitier things, which means it's more convenient to have a steady supply than an awful lot all at once. If you bring us about this much on average every day for, let's say three weeks, that'll be enough for the socks."

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"Sure, I can do that!" 

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"Cool! The socks will be ready before then, we'll let you know."

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"All right! ...Do you want the grubs now? I - sort of want to keep this container so I can get more tomorrow." 

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"We can hand off the grubs later. I don't have anything else to put them in on me."

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"All right." 

 

That was a much less successful morning's work than Masozi had been hoping for, but - that happens sometimes. 

He nods and smiles and heads off back to his room, where he can at least try to secure the mal grubs under the leftover mesh fabric. 

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